


Plant the Seed Now Watch it Grow

by nisakomi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 17:45:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5636095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisakomi/pseuds/nisakomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nights in Seoul that Junhui falls too much in love;<br/>The night in Hong Kong when he doesn't dare ask for directions at midnight, too afraid of walking into an abyss of flowers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plant the Seed Now Watch it Grow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kumadesu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kumadesu/gifts).



Hong Kong, no matter how many times he visits, overwhelms him. On one street he smells the salty sea, on the very next is the smell of sweet milk tea. He stands on the corner of two streets, just outside a small market and inhales the scent of fresh fruit, of flaky pastries, of fishy seafood, and of smoky chestnuts. If he walked past the restaurants, there would be stinky tofu, savoury noodles, spicy soup and the bright lights allow him to imagine it even if his feet don’t move. Below the bridge, cars and taxis and buses and cyclists and pedestrians honk and beep and buzz.

Nothing smells the same, and everything is just as he remembers it. Overwhelming.

Surrounded by the neon signs and so many people, he forgets if this is how Shenzhen is like too, or Guangzhou or Chongqing or Zhengzhou. The lettering blurs, merging together. It’s unfamiliar now, when he’s more used to Seoul and Busan and Daegu and Incheon. He reads ‘叫’ as _mni_ rather than _jiao_. He hears snatches of English, of Mandarin, of Cantonese, but mostly he still hears the voices of his group-mates and the staff.

“Is it weird that I find _Korean_ comforting here?” Junhui mumbles to himself. All of his time in Korea seems dedicated to finding things that remind him of home, of _China_ , but now that he’s back…

An hour away by public transportation, his mother is probably scooping out rice with a flat paddle into three bowls for herself, his father, and his brother. Maybe they’re sitting around the table already, nagging Yangyang into eating his _bai cai_. Maybe his father had cooked the spare ribs he loved so much, maybe his mother made her signature braised eggplant.

“Hyung, have you figured out where we’re going yet?” Minghao doesn’t speak to him in Mandarin here, and Junhui would laugh if he could straighten out his thoughts but the air is heavy and suffocating and behind him— behind him— no, he won’t turn around.

“Do you, can you speak Chinese?” Junhui presses a finger to his lips instead of smacking himself in the head. What kind of question was that, it should have been any of the variety of ways to ask ‘do you speak Mandarin’, but instead he goes for do you speak _Chinese_. His presence, it’s really affecting him and he didn’t even sit in the same taxi as him on the way here, and Junhui made sure, and he was so so careful. There’s no time. “Ms. Xing’s reservation…”

He speaks to a seated man who looks up at him with huge round eyes. “For 18 people?”

“Yes, for 18,” and Junhui nearly turns around.

The man stands, and Junhui twirls back, just barely catching himself. The man is pointing. “Over here, over here.”

Junhui can breathe, he flashes a ‘V’ and a smile at the camera, and follows the man just behind Minghao, who’s gotten the message too. He looks back just to see that the others are behind, doesn’t get a good look at anyone’s face, just getting a glance of Jihoon’s pink hair. He’s far ahead enough of the others that he’s relaxed as he listens to Jihoon’s joking compliments, the protection of Minghao’s body just beside his shoulder feeling like someone’s watching his back for him.

 

It starts before Hong Kong.

 

It starts with a fan handing Wonwoo a sticky note asking ‘to Wonwoo, Mingyu is _____?’. He makes six angry crosses over all of the responses, neatly prints ‘dongsaeng’, and underlines ‘weird person’ in her explanation of why she asked.

“Is it that weird to think I could have close friends?” Wonwoo whispers later, into the safety of a thick, red knit sweater and clutching at the arms that are wrapped tightly around his thin frame. He clings like they might let go of him at any time. 

A warm hand brushes at the nape of his neck at the same time that a pair of lips press against his forehead. It’s the first time Junhui sees, without just theoretical postulating, the uncertainty Wonwoo feels about his relationships with other people.

“Do they not notice I have other friends too? That I talk, a lot? Are my interactions with Soonyoung and Jihoon, Seokmin and Hansol, with Seungcheol-hyung and Junghan-hyung…are those too puny to count as anything more than superficial?”

The hand moves down his back and makes light circles there, slow and steady and sure.

“And how many times do I have to laugh and smile before my expression isn’t cold anymore? Is my face standoffish? I never let myself be tired or blank in front of cameras anymore, Junhui, but that’s the only thing that’s ever said about me. What’s wrong with me?”

The nose that’s pressed into his hair lifts, and Junhui takes a deep, breath, smelling shampoo and cologne and something that’s distinctly Wonwoo alone. “There’s so much right with you that it makes it hard for me to speak, sometimes,” Junhui says. “There’s so much right about you that I get scared to touch in case I mar what’s in front of me. There’s so much right inside and around you that there’s no space for something to be wrong with you.”

Wonwoo lets out a shuddered breath, choking on nothing. His fingers move from Junhui’s arms to his chest, and they grab a fistful of the front of his shirt. Junhui holds onto him, and rocks them back and forth. He presses chaste kisses to his forehead until Wonwoo is sitting on the rocks by the sea, wave after wave of love crashing onto him, drenching him, and he feels alive.

After Wonwoo’s breathing calms and his pulse isn’t leap out against Junhui’s hands, Junhui jokes into his scalp, “I didn’t know you had any friends.” He immediately regrets saying that, and a painful squeeze on his heart is spread throughout his body as well. “No, you have all of us as friends, friends who love you. And Mingyu-ah, well, he’s your best friend. He’s the one you leaned on the most, the one you turned to, the one you could depend on. It makes sense that you hold onto him, because you’ve been through so much together. And it’s just because they haven’t had the same experiences as you, the love of a friend, of a friend who cherishes you and is the glue holding you together, that they don’t understand what it’s like to trust someone completely and know that they’re your brother, if not by blood, then by choice.”

For a moment he pauses, sighing gently as Wonwoo traces patterns softly into the skin of his neck, small loops and quick strokes. He doesn’t look down to see what they mean, because he has more to say.

“Your friends are all close to you because you’re open and unassuming, you’re objective and honest and no one needs to try overt tactics to get you to notice them. You see things, you see everything, and there’s always happiness in your voice, you’re always content with life as things are, unworried with what they could or should be. And you’re warm, so warm, like the sun, and I’m a flower who, even if I try to resist, I always end up facing you, always, always, it’s you.”

Not once does Wonwoo fix any of Junhui’s grammar or pronunciation mistakes, not once does he try to interrupt him. For all Wonwoo feels beaten down, his emotional lows are affecting Junhui too, maybe even more so because Junhui has always had his heart on his sleeve, emotions on a rollercoaster ride. Junhui makes him _feel_ the same way he makes Junhui _think_ and together they poke and push and prod and tangle together until it’s impossible to separate one from the other.

And Junhui’s right, if he told Mingyu, Mingyu would laugh and wonder why everyone was so insecure and needed to put labels on things they didn’t understand. He’d tell Wonwoo “don’t worry about silly things” and “go back to sleeping on Junhui-hyung’s lap” and he wouldn’t hesitate to tell Wonwoo that “I love you hyung, but not the same way Junhui-hyung does, and I’m pretty sure you’re the exact same way back so just let it rest.”

 

Well then, maybe it starts before that.

Maybe it starts with two teenage boys who dance around each other, who live and eat and work together almost every hour of the day but who never touch, who never speak unless prompted. They chase each other in a circle, running around and around until it becomes unclear who’s the chicken and who’s the egg. And thereafter, they press their fingertips against each other, and ease up, one centimetre at a time until one of them is pressed flush against the other in a green practice room but the other is still trying to get away.

_The way to tell if a person likes you is the way they angle their body. Usually their hips and or shoulders will face towards the person in the room they find the most attractive._

Junhui reads that piece of psychology in the last year he goes to school in China on a webpage, and has used it in reverse ever since. So that no one can ever figure out who it is who makes his head spin, or his heart beat twice as fast, so that no one ever finds out the number of times his stomach flops in a single day, he turns to the side, turns to angle his body anywhere but towards him.

He stands stiffly underneath Wonwoo’s arms and hands, thinking he can’t get an angle further away than _the exact opposite direction_. When Wonwoo tries to bite his arm, he’s too terrified to make a sudden movement, he can’t move but he can’t stay either and he pulls his shoulders away away away. When Wonwoo takes the chair beside his, Junhui alters his position to sit with both his knees pointed in the away at a ninety-degree angle, makes sure to maintain breathing room between them, keeps space. He has to keep space, or else someone will notice, and that would be _awful_.

Or the most amazing thing that could ever happen to him.

They still circle around each other, only now they’re a ring fit snugly around a finger instead of something with a radius the size of their practice studio. And it’s better than going home.

“You’re going to debut. The thing that will ruin you the most at this stage, in your early days, is any type of scandal. Watch what you say, what you do, what you eat, who you’re around. Break up with your girlfriends. If you have a girl waiting for you back home, tell her to forget about you. Make sure she doesn’t tell anyone else. Do I make myself clear?”

At the time, that's irrelevant. It doesn't happen until a while down the road when dates are blurring together and Junhui doesn’t even know what he wore yesterday. He’s spent so much of the summer batting Wonwoo’s arm away from his shoulder, or having his own hand slapped away by Wonwoo that he can interact with him like a normal person, by necessity, forced by Soonyoung’s narration-style choreography. It’s only at this point that they can actually talk, and of course Junhui blurts out all his secrets and Wonwoo, stunned, bug eyed, blubbers his own back.

Reality dawns on them both around the same time. Wonwoo tilts his chin up, breaking away from the kiss with a sheen of saliva covering his swollen red lips. “CEO-nim said _girls_ , right?” Junhui asks breathlessly, still uncertain that this is reality, that after months and months of silent pining that even Mingming knew nothing about, that after all this time being frighteningly attracted to someone he was supposed to be on stage with, that the feeling could be mutual.

The fact that Wonwoo liked him back makes him bolder, more daring, almost reckless, but it’s mostly bravado that causes him to say that. What he really wants is reassurance.

Wonwoo’s nose dips back down so his eyes can meet Junhui’s. They’re dark and stormy and Wonwoo can’t reassure Junhui when he needs constant reassurance himself. So they say nothing after that, not with words, but Wonwoo can taste it on Junhui’s lips, the things he wants to say, the _you’re important to me and I won’t give you up without a fight_ as they press their mouths together, a collision of tongues and emotions.

 

They begin to form limits, however, lines that have to be drawn for their own sanities.

“Don’t,” Wonwoo says. “Really, stop.”

Junhui does, eventually, because there’s someone screaming his name, well, hoards of people screaming for them in general and his hair is sweaty against his neck while he waves, wearing a shirt that doesn’t really fit but matches with everyone else’s clothing. They look like a complete set, a family, thirteen bodies standing on a stage together, at long last. So he turns his head away, stops touching Wonwoo’s ass (or lack of ass, it doesn’t matter, Junhui’s obsessed with it and he only smacked him because he’d been touching Hansol anyway), anyway, _anyway_ there’s other things to focus on.

The problem is being allowed to touch Wonwoo is new, and his heart is still leading his brain instead of the other way around. His euphoria fills him to the tips of his fingers, and he finally understands the phrase ‘honeymoon phase’. He wonders if it’ll ever end. He hopes it doesn’t. Like a magnet, his attention is drawn back to whatever Wonwoo’s doing, over and over again. He has to force himself to look away, to think about something else, and he’s so restless he has to move his hands.

Wonwoo laughs at him then, a cute snort escaping from him, the folds between his nose and mouth creased charmingly. Junhui, pleased and a little too happy from all the current proceedings, moves in and turns his head so he’s facing the back wall and there’s absolutely no chance a fan could get an errant video of what he has to say.

It is, after all, a private thing. “I love you,” he says beside Wonwoo’s cheek, their faces leaned close together so that the voice doesn’t carry past Wonwoo’s ear. Wonwoo snorts again, laughs openly, happily, and lets the moment pass a little before the tinkling in his head and somersaulting stomach to settle down.

He leans in, waits until Junhui’s paying attention, and whispers “Me too.”

Junhui gives him a look for lack of originality, but also to cover up the fact that his heart has grown wings that have started flapping and threaten to take his heart straight out of his mouth. He’s a little too young to die yet, but if he were to die now, he’d be dying happy.

“You can’t _do_ things like that,” Wonwoo tells him when they get back into the van, hissing furiously and elbowing Junhui repeatedly in the ribs.

Junhui rubs at the spot where a bruise is sure to form in a few days time, and scowls. “Do _what_?” He asks angrily, squeezing Wonwoo’s knee and yelping when Wonwoo captures his hand to bite the flesh of his palm.

His voice is low in Junhui’s ear, tickling the skin there and making him squirm a little. Wonwoo holds him down with one hand and repeats, “The touching, the confession…you’re going to drive me crazy if you keep doing that.”

In reality, Wonwoo delights in these little things, tokens of affection, reminders of how much he’s loved. But he’s also wary. Extremely, extremely wary.

So they’re careful. They’re not as restrained as they were all those years ago when they first met, but there’s a limit to the amount of touching, and talking. They’re pros at showing the fans what they want to see so Junhui sticks to Minghao and Wonwoo sticks to Mingyu and they have a recognized look for when to stop, when things are getting too much. They can never be distracted, never let their guards down, and it’s a tough way to live or love, but no harder than however Jihoon makes it through weeks of choreographing and composing and not sleeping but still managing to excel during every performance.

Obviously, the members aren’t kept in the dark for long, and surely they too see the irony a month later when they start singing the wedding march at a fansign as Junhui and Wonwoo walk down the aisle of the concert all, ready to exit the doors and skip off into the sunset. In another life there’d be flowers and crying parents, and they’d be wearing tuxedos instead of cotton shirts, fixing each others’ bowties and squabbling over whom would stand as whose groomsmen, arguing about which one of them looked more beautiful that day. But they’re surrounded by fans, and that’s okay, because the people who need to know are already thinking it.

 

Is that when it started?

 

Wherever it starts, Hong Kong is not the end. But Hong Kong is, Junhui’s said it 300 times, overwhelming.

Things would have been fine if Junhui had just done the normal thing and stuck to the place he was at. They were all exhausted from the plane ride and were sprawled out in the maknaes’ room of all places, each hugging the closest possible pillow and refusing to let go.

Only Seungkwan was really moving around, holding onto the camera like he was born to interview and broadcast the members in a domestic habitat. He speaks to Seokmin briefly, who tries to wake up Jihoon, and the truth is Junhui really has to move so he can get out of the way. It’s not like there’s anywhere for him to be, not when all the beds and armchairs are taken, and he’s certainly not going to sit on a table the way Jisoo is.

Sunlight shines through the window, and he sits on the sill, looking out, seeing if he can recognize landmarks from their hotel room, naming things to himself quietly and not really having someone to confirm the accuracy of his memory. He’s not thinking about his mother when Seungkwan asks him, but he can conjure an image of her in his mind pretty quickly as soon as he’s prompted. He does miss her, misses her hugs and lilting voice, misses her smile and scolding and proud tone alike, but he’s not sad, not really.

It’s because he’s still dredging up pools of happiness that he runs his fingers through Wonwoo’s hair fondly. It’s a funny grey colour, but the dye hasn’t left it coarse or dry, and he’s pleased by the feeling of it against his skin. He’s feeling enough affection that he presses his body against him. Wonwoo’s pretty quick to push him away however, scratching at his cheek and then realizing their position and nearly poking Junhui’s eye out to get him to sit up.

After they disperse into their respective rooms to get changed for the rehearsal, Wonwoo quietly yells at him, “What were you thinking? That was on camera!”

Junhui’s still mid-laugh about something or another, and he’s bewildered when he replies. “What do you mean? It’s not like we don’t fix each other’s hair all the time. Mingyu recorded himself fixing Seungkwan’s hair in the airport, it happens a lot. There’s no need to be so worried.”

“Are you kidding me? Not worried? Why can’t you think before you do things? People apparently love to make assumptions about my life, we have to be careful!” Wonwoo is half shouting at this point.

“Minghao and Seungkwan were _literally cuddling_ on the bed, they’re not even together, and you’re worried about me jokingly petting you? Get a grip! They can just think this was an assumption too, no one is even close to thinking we’re dating Wonwoo, and you can stop using that as an excuse to push me away!”

Junhui can pinpoint the exact moment when Wonwoo’s soul leaves him, eyes narrowed and expression hardened for real this time, instead of the normal empty, neutral, coldness that people misinterpret. Wonwoo’s real anger is steely, and mixed with his exhaustion, it’s a sharp, piercing kind of blade that doesn’t hurt when it stabs in, but leaves you bleeding out, guts trailing behind you.

“Why can’t you just learn to have some boundaries around people? You’re like a clingy cat, who doesn’t understand when to stop, when I’m saying no. Just, just get out.”

Junhui can pinpoint the exact moment when Wonwoo’s soul leaves him because it feels like the sun has stopped shining, and his petals wilt automatically.

 

 

Seungcheol finds Junhui on the floor beside the entryway, one shoe half on, the other unlaced and lying sideways. He drags Minghao over by the wrist, and they pull him upright together. Seungcheol pats his shoulder until Junhui has his practiced smile for the audience plastered to his face, and he’s managed to be professional enough that he’s just tense, but not obvious. Junhui sticks to the two of them for dinner, which turns out to be a mistake because now he’s seated directly across from Wonwoo. He has to hold his neck in his hands the entire time to hide the flush, whether from anger or arousal is moot point considering how red he is, looking away and feeling exhausted for the rest of the night.

He tries to busy himself as much as possible, flitting about and conversing with the restaurant waiters, being involved in the video recording, holding things and moving things so his hands are busy. He’s restless, always restless, but pretending to have something to do means he doesn’t have to focus on something else, and he can hide behind this mask.

Their leader is magnanimous, and has done the same with Mingyu and Wonwoo. What Junhui sees of Wonwoo is a man whose happiness has been sucked out of him and every time he accidentally raises his head and glances at those striking eyes, the leaves of his plant existence droop a little further. He’s tried to see it from Wonwoo’s perspective, of needing to be discreet, but he things they’ve made a mountain out of a molehill and he doesn’t know what needs to be fixed, much less how to fix it.

He visits Jihoon’s room, thinking he’ll find Mingyu for advice, but he chickens out of asking the right questions at the last moment.

He’s beckoned in easily enough. “What’s up?” Jihoon asks, tone casual, as synth electro pop blares from the speakers. He’s probably a little surprised that he’s here but Junhui shrugs, and lets himself be caught up in their idea of a fun party, avoiding the camera like it’s physically hurt him and not sure why.

Mingyu leaves the room before Junhui does and he sits and watches Jihoon entertain himself on his laptop for a while, fiddling with the duvet, the sheets, the pillows. Eventually Jihoon gets annoyed and kicks him out and he wanders back to find Mingyu shouting at his best friend.

“Also, you’re a freaking idol, of course the way you date isn’t going to follow the same conventions as someone else! You’re a fucking idiot if you think that no one thinking you two are dating is a cause for concern. And damn straight you push people away for stupid reasons, of course Junhui-hyung’s noticed that, are you going to push him away for knowing that it’s something you do when shit is wrong? Do you really think that’s going to work on him?”

“It’s not,” Junhui says quickly from the hallway, before Wonwoo has a chance to answer. It’s cold in his heart because of the lack of sunlight and he has to fix this himself, or the flower really will die out.

“Good!” Mingyu shouts, and he storms away with his hands thrown up in the air, leaving the two of them to it.

Wonwoo looks at Junhui with dead eyes, covers drawn up to his chin. “I’m sorry. I saw how…you were pretty restless and unhappy at dinner and I shouldn’t have kicked out out.” He grimaces and Junhui’s icy roots begin to melt. Did his face mirror Wonwoo's sadness at dinner? Does that mean Wonwoo noticed?

But the air is clear now, crisp and cool instead of choking him like it had been before dinner, so Junhui takes a deep breath. “Are you okay?” He steps forward.

“Yeah I’m just…how much of that did you hear?” Wonwoo rubs at his face and his bangs stick up weirdly when he looks at Junhui again. Junhui wants to reach out and smooth them down, but he remembers what happened in the afternoon and he doesn’t dare.

“I’m not sure. Maybe all of it. Enough.”

Their eyes meet and Junhui can’t stand how empty Wonwoo looks, can’t stand the fact that their fight, that Junhui’s actions made him like this, and he thinks to hell with being afraid. He takes another step forward and sits down on the bed, an arm’s length away.

Within seconds, Wonwoo tumbles forward into his arms. He knows why he needed comforting now, knows that somehow, at some point, Wonwoo has come to embody _home_.

“I don’t know why I’m insecure about having valuable things close to me. I’ve been trying to answer that question all night and I don’t think it’s because I feel like I don’t deserve it. I think I’m scared that I’ll lose it, so rather than letting things get too far, I end things before they can really start.” Wonwoo’s nose is buried in Junhui’s shoulder and the side of Junhui’s face is pressed against Wonwoo’s head.

“I’m not going to leave you. I physically can’t leave you. Without you I can’t grow. Sun, meet flower. Remember?”

Wonwoo nods, and his chin digs at Junhui’s arm.

“I’m sorry too, for not realizing what you needed was comfort, not an argument. For what it’s worth, I’m terrified I’m going to be an abandoned flower, a single plant lost in a garden of things vying for your attention.”

Wonwoo’s grip around him tightens, their hug deepening until their chests are flush against each other, hearts beating as one. He pulls back after a while to look Junhui in the eye. “Let’s be brave together.”

Junhui doesn’t say yes. He kisses the corner of Wonwoo’s mouth and curls his petals to face the sun.


End file.
